In S3 Solutions’ Power of Partnerships Training, you & your consulting delivery team will discover the secrets to trouble-free,cooperative engagements.

POWER OF PARTNERSHIP for CONSULTANTS

Q. What’s the Secret to A Smooth, Profitable Client Engagement?
A. Moving from a limited “Vendor” or “Technical Expert” Relationship With Your Client to a “Powerful Partnership”

LEARN THE SPECIFIC CONSULTING SKILLS THAT CAN TURN YOU INTO A POWERFUL PARTNER WITH YOUR CLIENTS

In S3 Solutions’ Power of Partnerships Training, you and your consulting team will discover the secrets to trouble-free, cooperative engagements, with fewer escalations, less scope creep and conflicts that turn into problem-solving conversations.

Here’s what you will get out of the Power of Partnership Training:

More Sales Leads

Less Scope Creep

Fewer Escalations

Higher Profit Per Engagement

Less Unpaid Change Orders

Higher Client Satisfaction

More Productive Meetings

We’ve brought the Power of Partnership Training to some of the largest internal and external consulting organizations in the world—and smaller companies and startup’s, too.

In the “Power of Partnership” Training you’ll learn to:

Go past technical expertise to become a trustworthy partner.

Stop clients from escalating problems—deal with problems before they cause trouble.

Halt scope creep and say “No” the right way.

Expand engagements without manipulation.

Gracefully meet client objections and resistance and move past them with respect and partnership.

Turn conflicts to problem-solving conversations.

Unearth more leads to produce bigger projects and more revenue

We invite you to explore our Consulting Delivery area here. You’ll find case studies and written and video testimonials from leaders who have brought our training into their companies and found their projects run smoother and become more profitable as a result of our training.

If you like what you’ve heard or read here and you want to learn more, please accept our gift: “The 5 Hidden Pathways to Bigger Deals and More Profitable Projects” by signing up here for a free download. These valuable videos will get you started on the path to creating powerful partnerships with your clients.

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If you want to discuss with us how our training could take your team to the next level, please e-mail us or give us a call.

Our Client’s Needs

S3 Solutions was engaged by the Professional Services organization within the largest telecommunication company in Canada. The PS organization wanted their technical professionals to spot sales leads and qualify them for their sales rep’s. They also wanted to increase their ability to handle problematic consulting issues with their clients, such as halting scope creep, dealing with conflicts before they escalate, and discovering needs and issues before they became problems.

Our Solution

Before we presented the “Power of Partnership” live training program, we conducted an online Pre-Assessment Survey of all Professional Services participants.

We co-created highly customized client scenarios to make the connection between the classroom and the field and accelerate learning.

We Set up experiential exercises to reveal participants’ habitual behaviors, belief systems and values which limit them from reaching their full potential in their target areas.

We conducted a one-day live Power of Partnership training program that included conceptual models, learning simulations, instructor demonstrations, participant role plays, live learning laboratories, and individual coaching.

After a successful Power of Partnership live training program, we conducted an online post-course survey of all Professional Services participants.

We successfully presented the “Power of Partnership” training to 300 Professional Services participants.

After the training:

Quantitative Results

(Based on Post-Assessment)

Behavioral Results:

We decided to bring in the “Power of Partnership” training because we wanted to turn our technical experts into Trusted Advisors. We also wanted to improve our consultants’ ability to engage with customers and develop deeper client relationships to generate additional business for us.

We were pleased that our consultants learned to co-create solutions with clients, rather than simply being the “expert” with them. The course taught our people to listen for real needs, and better manage customer expectations, scope creep and client escalations. Now that our people took the training we believe they are better able to deliver more profitable projects to more satisfied customers and radically reduce scope creep.

Steve and Marty from S3 Solutions really understand the Professional Services consulting world; they “get” who we are, and we are very pleased that they fully customized the agenda around our unique needs.

Our Client’s Needs

A Professional Services organization for a global software company that specializes in “Big Data” committed to develop a solution-selling mindset among their consultants. They wanted their consultants to develop lead generation skills to create more qualified sales leads & increased partner enablement.

Ultimately, our client engaged our Power of Partnership training program to develop the business consulting skills critical to moving their Professional Services organization from a technical consulting focus towards a business consulting capacity.

Our Solution

Before we presented the “Power of Partnership” live training program, we conducted an online Pre-Assessment Survey of all Professional Services participants.

We co-created highly customized client scenarios to make the connection between the classroom and the field and accelerate learning.

We Set up experiential exercises to reveal participants’ habitual behaviors, belief systems and values which limit them from reaching their full potential in their target areas.

We conducted a one-day live Power of Partnership training program that included conceptual models, learning simulations, instructor demonstrations, participant role plays, live learning laboratories, and individual coaching.

After a successful Power of Partnership live training program, we conducted an online post-course survey of all Professional Services participants.

With the results of the online post-course survey in mind, we discussed follow-up options with our client’s senior executives. Together with our client, we rolled out these programs:

Webinars to instruct new course materials and review previous material.

Another online post-course survey to determine the results of the Webinars. The survey showed that participants were applying our skills at a high level of success.

A one-day in-person, instructor-led training that presented new Power of Partnership skills and reviewed the skills we had previously taught.

Behavioral Results

Keith Carlson,Vice President of Services and Alliances, Mark Logic

“We recently completed the Power of Partnership course and several follow-on Webinars. Ours is a very technical and very skeptical group about this kind of training. The results we’re seeing so far are outstanding: our customer satisfaction is fantastic and our utilization is very strong. Our employees have really gravitated to the capabilities and skills that were taught to them in the Power of Partnership course, and they have improved their skill level by over 20% from when they first started the course.

S3 is different because they really tailor their approach to fit consulting and services organizations. This is a core differentiation. It was key for me to take my technical-oriented organization and transform them into business advisors and trusted advisors with our customers and partners. I am very pleased with the results.”

Mahesh GidwaniVP of Professional Services Apptio, Inc

We brought in the “Power of Partnership” training because we wanted to transform our technical experts into trusted advisors. S3 Solutions totally delivered! What I really appreciate about working with them is that they really understand the Professional Services world; they get who we are.

They fully customized the agenda around our unique needs and coached our people very effectively through role plays, leveraging our own use cases. Our people have learned how to effectively influence clients and we are seeing increased client satisfaction. We are training our entire Customer Success organization in the Power of Partnership training.

Dione HedgpethSVP Customer Success, Apptio

The Power of Partnership training has given our Customer Success team the tools and techniques to more effectively partner with our customers. We are able to better manage the tough conversations with customers while at the same time building their confidence, creating stronger loyalty and most importantly, making them more successful with our solutions. Marty and Steve do a great job landing the concepts through coaching sessions tailored to real life situations specific to Apptio.

Jesse LeeFounder, Apptio, Inc

What I really liked about this training was that the scenarios were very challenging. Anyone can sail through a meeting with a potential business partner or client when things are pretty good, but what about when things are challenging and the deck is heavily stacked against you at the beginning? How do you navigate through those treacherous shoals? Well, that’s exactly what we practiced and our team is at a much higher level of mastery now.

Saurabh ShahVP of Success Management Apptio, Inc

The most valuable aspect of the Power of Partnership training was that it was great for all levels within our organization. For the more senior executives like me and the newer folks the great thing about Power of Partnership was that it applied a framework that allowed us to understand what we’ve been doing, and how to significantly improve it. For all levels of the organization it’s an incredible program.

Matt Rodgers,Sr. Software & Professional Services Executive, Lithium

This was a fantastic training session. I’ve been to a lot of training in my career and this was right up there with the best training sessions I’ve ever been in. There were a few things that distinguished it: the content was fabulous, the coaching was fabulous, but in particular the scenarios were excellent. Our team built scenarios that were very realistic to our work. We got to practice these scenarios that were literally taken straight from the pages of our day-to-day business.

Giorgio Weston,VP, Global Services, Lithium

We wanted to get better at gracefully and tactfully guiding our customers to timely completion of successful deployments of Lithium’s technologies. The team greatly improved their ability to develop deep trust with our clients by identifying clients’ real needs, and then influencing them to move in the optimal direction.
The training program was tailored to our unique needs and was very experiential. After the training, we were pleased to see our teams adopt the framework in their daily client interactions.

Shawn Tyler,VP of Consulting Services, Verint

The really cool thing about this training is that at the end of the day, there’s some skills that I know everyone on the team will take away and use tomorrow. You can’t really ask for anything better than immediate use. Very valuable, very good and very applicable to use immediately!

Mary Lou Joseph,Sr. Marketing Manager, Verint

The dynamic part of this was the interactive practice, with coaching sessions from the S3 trainers. The training was based on real-life scenarios that all of our team members relate to. It really drove the lessons home for them. I believe everything that the project teams learned today can be put to use immediately.

We decided to bring in the “Power of Partnership” training because we wanted to turn our technical experts into Trusted Advisors. We also wanted to improve our consultants’ ability to engage with customers and develop deeper client relationships to generate additional business for us.

We were pleased that our consultants learned to co-create solutions with clients, rather than simply being the “expert” with them. The course taught our people to listen for real needs, and better manage customer expectations, scope creep and client escalations. Now that our people took the training we believe they are better able to deliver more profitable projects to more satisfied customers and radically reduce scope creep.

Steve and Marty from S3 Solutions really understand the Professional Services consulting world; they “get” who we are, and we are very pleased that they fully customized the agenda around our unique needs.

Feedback from the Field: Participants:

“I have been working on a new opportunity with a customer. There are a number of different players in the customer’s organization involved. We were given marching orders from a high level executive in the customer organization. We have had to convince different groups to work with us because we are trying to replace an existing system. I have used a lot of what we learned in the class to understand priorities and find the facts.”

“A client recently complained with upper management about team communication issues. We were called into a meeting and before the meeting started, I strategized an Empty-The-Glass approach to the meeting with someone else who was in the course. We disagreed with the customer but we listened intently and eventually fully understood their position. Once we understood, we moved to solutions. At this point, I consider the client to be a happy customer. Thanks for teaching me how to do this.”

“I used “Meet and Move” to understand a client’s position and also “What if” to get a different deal on the table which met their requirements and ours. I was glad I had these tools!”

“I had a recent case where I needed to use “prioritized playback” with a prime program manager to make sure I understood the requirements when dealing with data deletion. The skill you taught us did the job.”

“The next day after taking the class I spoke with a customer who was upset. I used “Empty the Glass” and listened for 10+ minutes then played back what I heard. Then I used the “Reframe” to make it a joint problem/solution. It worked very well.”

“A customer was hesitant to engage with us since they were short on hours. We re-framed the conversation into a question of how we could ensure success while conserving their hours. It became a much easier conversation.”

“This course was surprisingly fast-paced and interactive. More than that, the instructors were very humorous and fun, as well as great at explaining the concepts.”

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If you think we could be a great fit for your business, please take a moment to reach out to us.